


Outside Help

by FlyingShibaInu



Series: Doing the Right Things are Willing Victims [4]
Category: Persona 3
Genre: Conversations, Ficlet, Gen, Pre-Canon, akihiko was at the beginning for a few seconds, back alley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 02:56:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20650055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingShibaInu/pseuds/FlyingShibaInu
Summary: That silver haired man had visited Shinjiro yet again, so Chidori distracted him with a talk.





	Outside Help

This was one of those days where Shinjiro's self-proclaimed brother visited the back alley and invited Shinjiro back to their team. After he refused, that man shrugged and walked away with a promise that he would be back.

Shinjiro was sitting on the steps, staring at the ground. Chidori approached the concrete stairs and sat down next to him. "Your friend is stubborn."

Shinjiro hummed in response. He looked up at glared at the direction that man had left. "Won't leave me alone."

Silence, and Chidori thought about it. "I envy you."

Shinjiro gave her a glance to make her continue.

"He is not hesitant to approach you."

"... 'Course not." Shinjiro put his hand in his coat pocket and took out a pocket watch. He held it in both of his hands and ran a thumb across it. "So?"

_Your point is?_ He meant. Chidori liked and hated how he was always on point, no beating around the bush. She flipped open her sketchpad and started drawing lines to keep her hand busy. "You are different."

"From you?" Shinjiro asked. "Doubt it. Ain't we all homeless, dying people on the streets?"

"No, there's something else," Chidori said with no effort to explain or back up her claim. Shinjiro didn't object, and she continued, "If I have such a nice friend who will remember me, it would be… painful."

Shinjiro raised his eyebrows.

"_'They prefer it when we suffer in silence_,' Jin had told me, and I agree." Chidori's gaze never left the sketchbook as she stained more graphite on paper. "Us...Takaya and Jin, not you… we are a burden for this society. No need to be remembered, as soon we would disappear. The important thing is to live in the moment."

"So you guys try to lay low and not make connections?"

Chidori nodded. "People like us remember each other. We don't belong anywhere else."

Shinjiro snorted. "Takaya told you guys not to feel attached."

Chidori glanced at him. "You are better at this than me, he said."

"He's a jerk," Shinjiro said.

Chidori let out a small smile. Takaya's words were the truth, but it was nice that Shinjiro tried to defend her.

"I'm not joking, he's a jerk." Shinjiro was playing with the chain attached to his pocket watch, if the tinkling of metal were anything to go by. "Never once have you said you wanted to be forgotten."

Her hand stopped, the pencil tip dug into the paper. Chidori was not the type to lie.

The truth it is.

"I don't want people to worry, to waste their time with me any more than they already had."

Shinjiro didn't comment on that.

Chidori closed her sketchbook and tucked the pencil into the spiral binding. "... Is it not painful for you?"

Shinjiro ran a thumb across his pocket watch again, now that Chidori was paying attention, she could describe it as a gentle caress to the metal surface. "Not really, more like annoying and a bother."

Chidori didn't miss the corner of his lips curving into a smile. Yes, one more proof that indeed, they were living in different worlds.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! [I'm here on tumblr!](https://tsukireicc.tumblr.com/)


End file.
